Everyone has one, they often stink, and the polite thing would be to keep yours to yourself. And for the love of all that is holy, don’t force yours onto someone else.

When it comes to your life, the single most important opinion is your own, particularly when it comes to your self-worth!

Just as allowing others to make your decisions takes away your free choice, so too does allowing the opinions of others to define your self-worth.

Your life is yours to live, for good or ill, and while there’s nothing inherently wrong with considering the opinions of others in relation to your life, permitting those opinions to define you is immensely unhealthy.

Though the people giving them may be well meaning, they’re still coming from people who have had, and who will continue to have, a different path through life than your own. Continue reading…

A slow and painful death is the absolute worst kind of death, and what could possibly be more slow and painful than toiling away in a cubicle for 8+ hours per day, 40+ hours per week, 48-50 weeks out of the year, for 40+ years of your life? I can’t think of anything.

Ironically, at the time it was instituted, the 9-to-5 workday and the 40-hour workweek actually represented a dramatic improvement over previous conditions. Go figure! But that was then, and this is now. Times change, and the world needs to keep pace.

There is nothing inherently wrong with working from 9-to-5, and there is nothing inherently wrong with a 40-hour workweek. The problem, as with all traditions, lies in blind adherence to said tradition.

Traditions limit your mental framework, often trapping you into a myopic point of view that defensively excludes all alternate possibilities. THIS IS THE WAY THINGS ARE SO STOP ROCKING THE DAMN BOAT BLARGHHH!!! Continue reading…

If you’re dead set on the path of escaping from your cage, then this is an absolutely critical lesson:

Stop Making Excuses

Stop. Right now. Make a commitment to yourself, to your future, and to any hope you have of ever being free to stop making excuses for your mistakes, shortcomings, or anything else that occurs in your life. Continue reading…

One of the things that really drags us down is failure, and the guilt that inevitably comes with it. We beat ourselves up over it, others may beat us up over it, and overall, when we fail, we just sort of feel like shit.

STOP THAT!

As far as I’m concerned, failure is AWESOME. Failure is a critical component of growth. In fact, I’d say that true growth is impossible without some measure of failure. Some lessons, while painful, can only be learned and internalized through failure. Continue reading…

As a kid, I was raised in a partially religious household. My Mom was devout Mormon (still is), and I believe my Dad was agnostic (if anything, he never really discussed it). He supported my Mom’s decision to make my sister and I go to church, but for the most part didn’t really take part (he was more the “church of the outdoors” sort on the weekends).

Because of this scenario, I went to church for 3 hours almost every Sunday of my life, spent 4 years in seminary studying scriptures, and even ended up serving a 2 year, full-time mission for my church.

At this point in my life, I’m no longer religious (for a huge number of reasons, enough for an entire book), so I won’t dive into the many whys here. Continue reading…